Maria Klawe
Harvey Mudd College (HMC)
Talk title:
"From 10% to 40% Female CS Majors: The Harvey Mudd College Story"
Talk abstract:
In 2006, much like at many other institutions, about 10% of HMC's Computer Science (CS) majors were female. At that time only a third of HMC's students were female, but CS was an aberration. About 20% of the Physics majors and close to 30% of the engineering majors were female. Four years later 40% of HMC's CS majors were female, exactly the same percentage as the whole HMC student body. This talk describes how the CS department accomplished this change.
Biography:
Harvey Mudd College is led by Maria Klawe, HMC’s fifth president, who began her tenure in 2006. A renowned computer scientist and scholar, President Klawe is the first woman to lead the College since its founding in 1955. Prior to joining HMC, she served as dean of engineering and professor of computer science at Princeton University.
Klawe joined Princeton from the University of British Columbia (UBC) where she served as dean of science from 1998 to 2002, vice president of student and academic services from 1995 to 1998 and head of the Department of Computer Science from 1988 to 1995. Prior to UBC, Klawe spent eight years with IBM Research in California, and two years at the University of Toronto. She received her PhD (1977) and BSc (1973) in mathematics from the University of Alberta.
Klawe has made significant research contributions in several areas of mathematics and computer science, including functional analysis, discrete mathematics, theoretical computer science, human-computer interaction, gender issues in information technology and interactive-multimedia for mathematics education. Her current research focuses on discrete mathematics.